Louis D

At low to mid powers across the field, the R/C will certainly improve star images just as Newtonian coma correctors and refractor field flatteners do. My point was checking at high powers (let's say less than 1mm exit pupil for starters). At equivalent powers with and without the R/C, do star images improve or degrade on axis? I've found both the GSO CC and TSFLAT2 to degrade star images on axis at high powers due to spherical aberration manifested as star image bloat. Splitting tight doubles would be a good test of this. I leave my correctors in 99%+ of the time. However, during the Mars opposition for example, I found the images to be sharper and contrastier without the correctors, so I left them out. I'm just saying be aware that the R/C may not be a panacea for all observing.

At high power, most correctors induce spherical aberration on axis. They're mostly intended for use at low to mid powers. The Tele Vue Paracorr 2 is supposedly an exception to this rule and can be used at high powers. I can't say that SCT R/Cs aren't usable at high powers since I have no experience with them. It might vary brand by brand how usable they are.

This has given me some ideas. Solar observing in Texas is brutal most of the year (we're just north of the tropics). To expand the number of months I can solar observe, I'll have to work out how to make a full body screen using some sort of collapsible pop up beach sun shade tent to make storage compact and lightweight. Perhaps something similar to the one below could be made to work by unzipping part of the opposite side door and keeping the tripod low?

The original Pentax XLs were 5.2, 7, 10.5, 14, 21, 28, and 40mm. Thus, every other was a doubling in FL (almost for the 40mm, should have been 42mm) or roughly 1.4x between adjacent eyepieces. For years, I just used their 5.2mm and 14mm along with a much cheaper Rini 38mm MPL. Then my eyepiece collecting started in strongly about 12 years ago. That's about the same time my disposable income started jumping upward after the Great Recession.

For very low contrast planetary observing at high powers, you'll probably want to revert back to a 1.25" visual back (or 2" with 1.25" reducer) to eliminate about 8 extra lens elements in the optical path. I do a similar thing by removing my GSO coma corrector in my Newtonian or TSFLAT2 in my refractors.

Compression rings are in most of my focusers, CC, and Barlows. I'm not always a fan of them with undercut eyepieces. I get an occasional snag, but never a complete jam. I prefer nylon thumb screws over metal. They hold as well without marring anything. Given the number of reports of BCL jamming and not releasing, and pushing the eyepiece off axis, I'll avoid them. The Antares/Olivon Twist-Lock adapter seems nearly ideal as being closer to a true collet. They may not grab as hard as the BCL, but I've never heard of them jamming.

There used to be a 7mm LV that didn't get carried forward to the NLV and SLV lines for unknown reasons.

When I lived in New York state in the late 80s/early 90s, the haze was so bad most days that I couldn't see the sun even with cloudless skies. Astronomy of any sort was often a no-go there. It wasn't until I moved to Texas that I took up astronomy thanks to the clear, dark skies I enjoyed at that time. Nearing retirement, I'm looking to move further out to more rural surroundings. I've found that if I can get my Dob on target, I can resolve M22 at high power despite it being completely invisible in the murk at low power. It's amazing how high power works well together with stellar objects even in bright skies.

Nope, those are the same as the Celestron Luminos line, just with the 31mm labelled 32mm.

Young suburbs at the very edge of a growing metro area adjacent to farms or a forest and having low density housing tracts with no commercial development can easily have Bortle 5 skies. Mine started out that way 30 years ago. I'm closer to Bortle 7 or worse in most directions now that we have tens of thousands of houses, many giant shopping centers, night lighted school fields, car dealerships, supermarkets, etc.

Astronomics has 10mm UWAs on order in their Astro-Tech house brand, so it is available from the manufacturer. Perhaps someone on your side of the pond will order some in the near future.

Only an option for me in the short winter season here. Putting any covering over my head from April to October leads to profuse sweating even at night for me here. From June to September, I run a box fan across me to help keep me from sweating at night. That, and it keeps the mosquitos at bay.

High end camera lenses have had advanced multicoatings since the mid-70s to mid-80s, depending on the manufacturer. I'm sure similar coatings were applied to high end microscope eyepieces and objectives around the same time. High end binoculars and spotting scopes soon followed. It took a while longer for these coatings to migrate to entry level camera lenses and even longer for eyepieces not made by the leading optical houses. Many entry level binoculars and spotting scopes are still singly coated. Some eyepieces packaged with department store grade telescopes aren't coated at all. I'm guessing that when Tele Vue started making eyepieces in the 80s, they did not have access to cutting edge coatings that were only available for internal production by the leading optical houses. Throughout much of the 1990s, many Chinese eyepieces were only singly coated for similar reasons. I'm further guessing that Taiwanese and then Chinese optical houses advanced their internal coating technology through the late 1990s and early 2000s and later. As such, it's always a good idea to inquire about the age of eyepieces not made by Pentax, Vixen, Olympus, Nikon, Zeiss, and Leica who have all been using very good coatings for 25+ years. I don't know much about Takahashi eyepieces and how their coatings have changed over the past 40 years. Meade and Celestron eyepieces were in a similar situation to Tele Vue. Their coatings were dependent on whatever their contracted manufacturers had available at the time.

I'd like to have seen that; although I'll agree holding onto 350 eyepieces at one time would be excessive even by my hoarding standards. I do have well over 400 CDs boxed up in the house, though; so I just might have kept all 350 eyepieces were I in your shoes. 🤔 If I'd had the discretionary spending power I have today 20 years ago, I just might have ended up with such a collection. Related to panoramas, remember the old Globuscope and Spin Shot film cameras for panoramas that were spring driven? How far photo technology has advanced in 40 years is amazing. Just about every smartphone can take really good panoramas now.

Phase coatings are a necessary evil of roof prisms to realign the slight phase shift experienced by the light passing through it. Porro prisms do not experience this phenomena and neither do right angle prisms. I'm not sure that Amici prisms would experience the same effect as a roof prism since the light paths are vastly different: Amici Prism: An Amici prism is just a right angle prism with one extra 90 degree reflection on the hypotenuse.

Definitely not me. My kids accuse me and the wife of being hoarders. I've still got 20+ year old digital cameras that are so obsolete I can't even read their memory cards anymore or get their batteries to charge, and yet I haven't chucked them for unknown psychological reasons. I even boxed up my 200 and 300 CD changers and put them away just in case I ever want to go back to playing CDs instead of MP3s. What is wrong with me? 🤪 On the plus side, my grown son has eyes on my old 1980s turntable to play his, and my, vinyl records. It still works great and wasn't cheap to buy back in the day. Here's proof of my eyepiece hoarding: I did pass along the BST/Paradigm and HD-60 sets to my grown daughter now that she and her husband bought a house in a semi-rural area. She also got some of the lower end 2" eyepieces for widest true field of view use and a couple of the reticle eyepieces for the 60mm RACI finder scope I loaned her. I hadn't used that finder scope in 20 years, and yet I held onto it. Now I know why. 😁

Here in Texas, I have to deal with smoke particles from wildfires to the west and northwest and agricultural fires to the south and southwest. If the sky is hazy, there is an air quality alert, or I can smell smoke in the air, I simply don't take my gear outside at all to avoid gunking up the optics.

I use both a 9mm Morpheus and 10mm Delos, and both are great all around performers with long eye relief. My 7mm XW is nice, but sometimes displays a bit of chromatism at the edge on bright objects. All have wonderful contrast from excellent stray light control. Sorry I can't be of much help on the XWAs since my astigmatism precludes using them without eyeglasses; and with eyeglasses, they're narrower than the XW, Morpheus, and Delos. My BV eyepieces live in a different case from my A-team monovision eyepieces, so I never use the two at the same time. If I setup for BV usage, I don't get out the monovision case and vice-versa. My point is, you're unlikely to use the Vixens in monovision viewing as you grow in the hobby, so don't worry about overlap with wider field eyepieces used strictly for monovision.

Not completely invisible. The diffuse diffraction adds a bit of glow to the entire field, lowering contrast a bit. I can't recall any reports of side-by-side testing of otherwise identical scopes except for spider type on low contrast objects to actually quantify the difference, however.

Try putting vibration suppression pads under each tripod foot to settle the vibrations more quickly if needed. Be careful to avoid over tightening the clamp on the lower leg section. One used tripod similar to yours I looked at had split the ring around the tube to where it wouldn't tighten at all, so the legs had to be used all the way retracted.

The bar also makes for a nice handle to lift the scope out of storage if it is stored in a tightly fitted, foam lined case.

Now you need to swap out the 5mm SLV for a rare 7mm LV since you've got two 5mm eyepieces in there.

Nope, OP said the rings screw to the mount as highlighted above. Further, OP confirms that's the mount. @Mandopicker101BTW, make sure to let us know how you get on with all your new kit. It's good that you're breathing new life into an older scope.

FYI, here's the ad with more images.

@Mandopicker101Correct me if I'm wrong, but does your original scope and mount look like this at the rings?